Groundwater Sustainability
Evaluating how aquifer depletion affects irrigation capacity, crop production, land-use transitions, and long-term agricultural viability.
Research
Groundwater, irrigation systems, and agricultural adaptation.
My research examines how agricultural systems respond to water scarcity, economic constraints, irrigation technology, and land-use change. I combine agricultural economics, hydro-economic modeling, geospatial analysis, and optimization to develop decision-support tools for groundwater-dependent regions.
Research Themes
My work is organized around four connected themes that link water, agriculture, economics, and spatial decision-making.
Hydro-economic Modeling
Developing economic and optimization models that represent irrigation investment, crop choice, pumping costs, groundwater constraints, and net returns.
Geospatial Agricultural Analysis
Integrating remote sensing, GIS, county-level agricultural data, climate, soil, and water datasets to analyze spatial patterns in agricultural systems.
Decision-support Tools
Building practical tools that help evaluate irrigation technology, water savings, crop transitions, and economic feasibility under changing conditions.
Current Research Focus
My current work focuses on the U.S. High Plains Aquifer and related groundwater-dependent agricultural regions.
High Plains Aquifer irrigation transitions
I study how declining groundwater availability may shift irrigated agriculture toward lower-capacity irrigation systems, dryland crop production, and alternative land uses over multi-decade planning horizons.
Bioenergy crops and land-use change
I evaluate whether perennial bioenergy crops, including switchgrass, can support transitions from water-intensive irrigated systems while contributing to conservation, carbon, and agricultural resilience objectives.
Irrigation system upgrade economics
I develop decision-support tools that combine climate, crop yield, soil, slope, energy prices, and investment costs to assess the economic feasibility of irrigation system upgrades.
Methods and Data
My research uses a combination of economic modeling, spatial analysis, optimization, and agricultural datasets.
Hydro-economic modeling
Optimization
GIS and remote sensing
Crop-water analysis
County-level agricultural datasets
Groundwater data
Excel/VBA tools
Python and ArcGIS workflows
GAMS modeling
Interested in research collaboration or related work?
I welcome inquiries related to agricultural water management, groundwater sustainability, irrigation economics, land-use transitions, and decision-support modeling.